The present invention relates to medical devices used in surgery, and in particular to tissue retainer or suspender devices adapted to suspend or retain human or animal tissue, for the duration of the surgical intervention, inspection, observation or operation, in a position determined by the operator of the device, whilst leaving the operator's hands free thereafter for other tasks.
Single use, disposable medical devices have become popular over the years with the advancing progress made in non-invasive or minimally invasive surgical techniques, such as in keyhole surgery, for example laparoscopy or celioscopy based surgical techniques. Additionally, widespread implementation of these single use devices has enabled not only a reduction in the costs of the devices, and treatment as a whole, for example because post-use resterilisation is no longer needed, but also has opened up the possibility for some of the materials used to be recovered in recycling programs.
One of the problems with non-invasive, or minimally invasive surgery is that the constraints of operating, observing or inspecting through one or several small insertions in the body often makes it necessary to reach parts of the body which lie under other body tissue, for example, under organs, muscle layers, cartilage, and the like. Naturally, one could always attempt to approach the target part of the body via a more direct route, by moving the human or animal body into a suitable position before or during surgery, but this is often inconvenient and may not provide the ideal environment in which to carry out the intervention, or may even be counter-productive to the aims of reducing trauma in general. Even in open surgery, there are also situations where tissue, organs or other body parts are required to be held, retained or suspended, temporarily from the field of intervention. With open surgery, for example, it is fairly commonplace to use surgical clamps. Such clamps, however, have several drawbacks: they are often unwieldy, or voluminous, making them unsuitable for working in small spaces or cavities, and because of their clamping effect, they often crush the tissue to which they are attached, potentially creating a further source of trauma to that part of the body. Additionally, if the clamps are made of surgical steel, then they will require resterilisation after the intervention has finished, with all the inherent costs involved therein.